Holidayifying My Prompt

Question

With Christmas around the corner, I'd like to make my system's prompt (for every user) a bit more festive and cheery.

Namely, I'd like to attach a Happy Holidays! (or similar) message post-login for every user on the system (on terminal login, SSH or locally). I'd assume this is a simple echo command, but I'm not sure where the appropriate place to put this command is in such a way that it would affect everyone. For obvious reasons, I'd rather not modify everyone's .bashrc. So, where is that?

Maybe pipe your input to lolcat? I know its far from what you want, but a little color doesn't kill. :) — Tony Lancer, Dec 23 '16 at 17:13
You can't paste emojis in your terminal? O.o Then open .bashrc with gedit or something. — muru, Dec 23 '16 at 17:20
(the "show message at login" part should be a separate question) — muru, Dec 23 '16 at 17:24
Ok. What sort of login? GUI? TTY? SSH? If GUI, what do you want to do? Open a terminal and run a command? — muru, Dec 23 '16 at 17:26
Ive seen this in sshd_config. Theres banner, and something else. basicly there are text files, for this. you would insert your greeting — j0h, Dec 23 '16 at 17:31
@KazWolfe see http://askubuntu.com/a/100058/158442 pam_motd does the MOTD for both SSH and local logins. — muru, Dec 23 '16 at 17:32
Possible duplicate of How can display a message on terminal when open it — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Dec 30 '16 at 23:22

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 23 '16 at 21:15

Linux can do this using the /etc/motd system, or any system that extends that (namely, update-motd).

Given this information, it's possible to add a simple shell script to /etc/update-motd.d/40-holiday:

#!/bin/bash
echo Happy holidays from your local sysadmin!

Upon marking this as runnable (sudo chmod a+x /etc/update-motd.d/40-holiday), the MOTD can be forcefully updated using the command update-motd (as root).

Any subsequent logins will use the new (expanded) MOTD, finally bringing some holiday cheer to anybody who has to log on to a server on Christmas day.

Note that this method depends on the update-motd package, which should be pre-installed. But if it's not, sudo apt install update-motd.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

I'd like to inject a christmas tree emoji () into my own PS1 prompt somehow

Try using \u1f384 and reference https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/25903/awesome-symbols-and-characters-in-a-bash-prompt for common pitfalls.

I'd also like to attach a "Happy Holidays!" message to every user's shell (at login only).

I would suggest changing the motd banner, if I understand what you want correctly. I don't remember off the top of my head how it's done best in Ubuntu, but if you want to be lazy you could modify one of the files in /etc/update-motd.d/, such as 98-reboot-required and throw an echo "Happy Holidays!"; at the end.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 30 '16 at 23:12

1

If you are using SSH and motd, don't forget to update sshd_config.

Change: PrintMotd no to: PrintMotd yes

And restart the ssh server to apply the changes.

answered Dec 30 '16 at 23:12

fugitive

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Holidayifying My Prompt

3 Answers3